In Tulsa, a century-old race massacre still haunts Black Wall Street

Olivia Hooker was 6 years old in 1921 — the year she witnessed the massacre. (Family photo)

Olivia Hooker, 103, poses at her White Plains home. Hooker is one of the last surviving witnesses of the Tulsa Race Massacre. (Michael Noble Jr. for The Washington Post

B.C. Franklin, a Greenwood lawyer and the father of famed historian John Hope Franklin, wrote a rare firsthand account of the massacre later donated to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“The sidewalk was literally covered with burning turpentine balls,” he wrote. “For fully forty-eight hours, the fires raged and burned everything in its path and it left nothing but ashes and burned safes and trunks and the like that were stored in beautiful houses and businesses.”

On June 1, 1921, martial law was declared. Troops rounded up black men, women and children and detained them for days.

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Minister Louis Farrakhan and beloved activist Dick Gregory are two men who love Black people and stand against white supremacy. They haven’t gotten us to the other side but they’ve empowered many to continue the struggle. May the universe continue to support them and us.

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Loving the Black Perspective

My heart is so sad. I’m filled with disgust and some anger. Since I was a child I’ve asked myself “How can people be so cruel?” At one point I decided white people couldn’t be human. No other human acts so heinous.

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Not one white person in this crowd would want to be treated the way Black people are treated in this country. They know how badly we are treated, they know and are all participants in that racist treatment. It ain’t ignorance we are fighting against, ‘they know”. Now we must come together and force them to stop. We will not accept it any longer.